ABSTRACT
At thirteen Roselle was already active in the Vietnam War protest move ment. He was arrested for demonstrating in Los Angeles' Elysian Park, an incident that permanently tainted his view of authority and the law. "I was totally surprised that it was illegal to distribute literature in a public park," Roselle says. "The arrest destroyed my respect for government, what freedoms we have. I became very anti-social, opposed to almost everything. A lot of us were in that mode." He spent time with Abbie Hoffman's Youth International Party (the Yippies), joining a collective of anarchists outraged at what they saw as the moral bankruptcy of American society. Roselle learned the rudiments of organizing, radicalism, and confrontation from the Yippies at numerous protests, including uprisings at the Democratic and Republican national conventions in Miami in 1972. Months later he was there at the gloaming event of the anti-war movement, Richard Nixon's second swearing-in. "That was the last big demonstration against U.S. foreign policy for that era. The inauguration of Nixon was really demoraliz ing to the movement."
